Television

Monday, September 10, 2018

Judging like umpiring is about more than balls and strikes

Jim Evans, a former major league umpire, and special
adviser to the president of Minor League Baseball, wrote the following op-ed for the Washington Post:

I have been an umpire since I was 14. I have worked at every
level, from Little League on up, and I worked thousands of games in the major
leagues for 28 years. I don’t remember when I first heard the popular analogy
comparing judges to umpires calling balls and strikes, but recently it’s been
everywhere. When Brett Kavanaugh was first nominated to the Supreme Court, Tony
Perkins of the Family Research Council called him “a constitutionalist — someone who will
call balls and strikes.” This past week, as Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings
began, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) described him as “somebody who calls balls
and strikes and doesn’t come up with his own strike zone.” Supposedly a judge
is, and should be, as mechanical as an ump.

It’s true that there are similarities. Umpires have always
been considered authority figures, like judges. Both are subject to a lot of
scrutiny, and we do what we think is right by rule and tradition. Umpiring is a
special calling and a learned skill that requires extraordinary mental
toughness. When you put on your uniform, you are supposed to leave all your
subjective feelings in that dressing room. Personal integrity and respect for the
game are at stake.

But we have never been robots who simply call balls and
strikes. Judges and analysts who describe an umpire’s job in those terms are
oversimplifying.

Seeing the televised rectangle that allegedly represents the
strike zone, you might surmise that any 3-year-old should be able to tell
whether that little white sphere is in or out of that box. Replay has
reinforced the feeling that it’s simple and obvious.

Yet there are many intangibles when it comes to calling
balls and strikes. What the umpire’s actually doing is gauging a baseball’s
relative position as it travels 95 miles an hour into a three-dimensional area.
You’re judging a pitch as it leaves the pitcher’s hand and goes to the
catcher’s mitt in less than half a second.

And when it lands, there are considerations beyond the
strike zone: Did the batter swing and miss? Did the ball graze the bat even
though the batter did not swing? Did the batter commit to the pitch without
taking a full swing? Even if the ball is outside the strike zone, if the batter
committed to the pitch, it’s a strike. Did he get his body in a hitting position
before moving his bat? If he was in a hitting position, how far did the bat
travel? Those critical adjustments happen in thousandths of a second. If you’re
not trained to use your eyes properly, you’ll miss them.

Then there are the other plays, on the bases and at the
plate, that require rule interpretations and judgment calls: catches and no
catches, fair and foul balls, safes and outs, and base-running.

For example, the rule book states that a runner must avoid a
fielder in the act of fielding a batted ball. If you collided with a shortstop
who was bent over in the act of fielding a ground ball, you would be guilty of
interference. But if the shortstop had completed the act of fielding and was
attempting to tag you when the collision occurred, there would be no penalty.
Among elite athletes, this all happens in milliseconds, and to the untrained
eye, the plays look the same — both violent collisions with the ball on the
ground. This requires an interpretation of when one act ended and another began,
and whose rights are in effect. This is a judgment call.

And it has to happen fast. Unlike a judge, an umpire can’t
deliberate over days or weeks, reading briefs over and over, debating with law
clerks or fellow judges. Umps don’t have that luxury. Both teams, a manager
whose job may be on the line and a stadium full of paying spectators are
impatiently awaiting an instant ruling.

When baseball was invented in the mid-19th century, it was a
bit more like our adversarial court system. There were three umpires: One was
hired by the home team and one by the visiting team, and a neutral third party
was there to step in if the advocates couldn’t agree. But the teams disagreed
so much that, eventually, the sport’s administrators decided that only the one
impartial guy was needed. That one guy had to own his decision regardless of
how spectators or players reacted. Nowadays, umpires work in crews and own
their decisions as a crew. And at the major league level, replay officials
thousands of miles away may have the ultimate decision — which you could
consider the final appellate court.

As an umpire, you learn to position yourself on the field so
that you’re in the most advantageous location to observe a pitch or a play. You
learn to read cues and make the proper adjustments when something changes. It
can take years of experience, an exhaustive understanding of the rules and
consistency in your calls to become a credible umpire, and even then, you’re
going to be in the middle of a lot of arguments and controversies. As a mentor
of mine reminded me when I started: There was only ever one perfect man, and
they crucified him, so umpires have to learn how to handle criticism. As with
judging, the tough calls are hardly ever obvious. Balls and strikes are elusive
creatures.

About Matt

An analysis of crime and punishment from the perspective of a former prosecutor and current criminal justice practitioner.
The views expressed on this blog are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinions or postions of any county, state or federal agency.